Welcome back! In prior episodes, we have explored how to determine whether or not a speaking engagement is worth saying “yes” to. Agreeing to a speaking engagement is so much more than the idea of how much fun or a good opportunity it might be. A key piece of this decision-making criteria should be what the Return On Investment (ROI) looks like. Before we agree to any speaking opportunity, we really need to do our due diligence and run some numbers to make sure that this speaking engagement is going to be a good fit for us financially. Today’s episode is all about factors to consider to effectively calculate your ROI for a speaking engagement.
If you loved this episode and it motivated you to add speaking to your business, I’d love for you to leave me some positive feedback on iTunes and tell me about your biggest takeaway. Take a screenshot of you listening on your device, post it to your Instagram Stories and tag us @thecreativespeakerpodcast.
Episode takeaways you don’t want to miss:
- Know your numbers! You can’t effectively calculate ROI without knowing them.
- The expenses associated with attending a speaking engagement can add up very quickly and need to be considered in great detail
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- Child care, lodging, airfare, time away from work, dog walker, eating out, time associated with planning logistics, wardrobe
- Calculating the revenue/benefit of speaking at a particular event can be a bit more obscure, but is still absolutely essential
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- There will be unmeasurable metrics (hard to measure the return on exposure)
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- Exposure doesn’t pay the bills so tread lightly here
- Your ROI for a specific speaking engagement can change a year after you’ve given your talk. It might take that long to convert a new lead you gained from a conference you spoke at
- Do NOT just wing what the outcome of an event is going to be! Set clear/definable/measurable goals and objectives. The lifetime return on a speaking engagement should be high (and measurable) but constantly grows, but a near-term calculation on a speaking engagement ROI should be based on something measurable.
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- Selling copies of your book
- Future speaking engagements
- Growing your email list
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- Use a specific opt-in or freebie that is measurable
- Sell course content
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- Have a unique code or link to track how many sales came from a specific event
- Growing social media following
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- In order to use social media growth to compute ROI, you need to assign a value to each follower. Some followings convert more than others. Be honest with yourself and have a value established for them. It very well can make more sense to run an ad campaign on facebook to get these followers than paying the out of pocket costs to travel out of state.
- Don’t focus on the objectives of others or on objectives that don’t move the needle for you. Really focus on measuring objectives and goals that can be both quantified and make you money
- Craft your talk around the goals you’ve set out to achieve at a specific speaking engagement
For full show notes and links, visit: http://www.thepublicspeakingstrategist.com/shownotes/058
